Apparently multiple countries -- including Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland -- made it clear they would not support the latest text put forth by Romania, and therefore would have blocked it from moving forward. Monday's negotiations were supposed to have been the "final" negotiations (after the previous "final" negotiations that didn't accomplish much) around a "compromise" bill that then would have gone out to be voted on by the EU Council, the EU Committee and the EU Parliament in the next few months. However, with the news of all those countries (via the EU Council) deciding to vote against the proposal, it effectively blocks it for now.

MEP Julia Reda now has the full breakdown of the votes, noting that 11 countries voted against the "compromise" text: Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Slovenia, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Croatia, Luxembourg and Portugal. That's... a pretty big list. Reda points out that most of those countries were concerned about the impact on users' rights (Portugal and Croatia appear to be outliers). That's pretty big -- as it means that any new text (if there is one) should move in a better direction, not worse.

As Reda notes, this does not mean that the Copyright Directive or Article 13 are dead. They could certainly be revived with new negotiations (and that could happen soon). But, it certainly makes the path forward a lot more difficult. Throughout all of this, as we've seen in the past, the legacy copyright players plowed forward, accepting no compromise and basically going for broke as fast as they could, in the hopes that no one would stop them. They've hit something of a stumbling block here. It won't stop them from still trying, but for now this is good news. The next step is making sure Article 13 is truly dead and cannot come back. The EU has done a big thing badly in even letting things get this far. Now let's hope they fix this mess by dumping Articles 11 and 13.

from the why-is-it-still-moving-forward? dept

Earlier this week, we noted that the film, TV and sports industry associations had come out against Article 13 in the EU Copyright Directive. It was for all the wrong reasons of course -- mainly, that (1) negotiators were exploring very minor safe harbors that would give internet platforms conditions they could follow to avoid liability and (2) they were hoping that a few court cases would break their way and they'd get an even better result in the courts -- but it was still notable. After all, much of Article 13 was pushed for by those same industry reps.

Still, some suggested that while the movie and TV folks wanted out, the record labels didn't, as they had been even more instrumental in crafting Article 13, with their entirely mythical concept of the "value gap" (a thing that does not actually exist) which they incorrectly believed Article 13 would solve. However, on Thursday, even the record labels bailed out on support for Article 13, though it appears for the same awful reasons as the film studios. They don't go quite as far as the film and TV folks (who ask for Article 13 to be put on hold indefinitely), but rather call for major changes:

With the final trilogue only days away, European creatives and rightsholders urgently inform EU policymakers that the 13 January draft text of the proposed Copyright Directive does not meet the original objective of Article 13 and urgently requires significant changes.

They don't really explain why they're so upset, but it's not difficult to see that it's the same reason as the film, TV and sports organizations. Again, Article 13 is a kind of bait and switch. All of the stuff people are complaining about -- the mandatory filters, notice-and-staydown, the insane fines -- all go away if the internet platforms agree to basically cough up all their money to the legacy copyright gatekeepers. The "secret" truth behind Article 13 is that even the folks crafting it know that all of the demands are absolutely ridiculous. It's just that they've included a "way out." And that "way out" is to agree to insane licensing rates from the legacy copyright players. Despite the nonsense you'll hear, this won't create "fair market" rates or "fair" anything. You don't negotiate a fair market rate when you're basically told that if you don't agree to whatever rates the copyright gatekeepers set, you'll get fined billions of dollars.

So any path to avoiding having to agree to a license at the end of a shotgun is seen as a non-starter for the entertainment industry. Though, their latest bit of petulance about not getting everything they want kind of gives away the gameplan. This was never about stopping infringement. It was always about a government-mandated wealth-transfer from the companies who actually innovated to the companies that failed to innovate.

Either way, if they no longer like the deal, the tech companies have never liked the deal and (most importantly) the public hates the deal... then why is the EU still pushing forward with it? Who actually still supports it, beyond the politicians in the EU? It's one thing to say that a true political compromise makes no one happy, but this is a case where everyone is fundamentally against the end result entirely.

So, please, European bureaucrats: let's just leave Article 13 in the trash pile where it belongs.

from the this-is-not-how-you-regulate dept

The EU Copyright Directive continues to be a total and complete disaster. It's so bad that neither of the two main groups lobbying around it -- the legacy entertainment industry and the big tech companies (with the vast majority of the lobbying coming from the copyright sector) are both unhappy with the bill (though for opposite reasons). And yet, despite all of this, the EU continues to soldier forward with a new proposal and a new draft that still requires that internet companies do the impossible:

The specific suggestions being pushed in the revised Copyright Directive suggests that whoever is putting this stuff together still has no idea what they're talking about. There's an attempt at fixing Article 11 (the snippet tax) not by actually fixing it, but at least making sure that it doesn't apply to "individual words or very short extracts."

The rights referred to in the
first subparagraph shall not
apply in respect of uses of
individual words or very
short extracts of a press
publication.

What does "very short extracts of a press publication" mean? Well, we'll have to see what courts think of it after extensive litigation, I guess.

More importantly, Article 13 remains an utter mess where they still think that internet companies can just wave a magic wand and suddenly they will stop all infringement without also taking down non-infringing content. The text still pushes for online platforms to have to take out licenses for everything -- and on the question of takedowns of stuff that isn't actually infringing, it just says "don't do that":

The steps taken by the
online content sharing service
providers should be without
prejudice to the application of
exceptions and limitations to
copyright, including in particular
those which guarantee the
freedom of expression of users.

Users should not be prevented
from uploading and making
available content that they have
produced and that contains
existing works or other protected
subject matter for specific
purposes of illustration or
parody when these uses do not
create significant harm to
rightholders.

First of all... how is that even possible to do these things without running afoul of the other parts of the law? The bureaucrats don't say because they don't understand any of this. Second, this new text basically only says that this applies to "parody" or when the uses "do not create significant harm to rightsholders." But, who determines that? We've seen rightsholders go nuts over all sorts of uses that wouldn't create actual harm (in some cases that would lead to more revenue). All of this is just left up to the idea that internet companies will magically figure out what's okay and what's not.

It's almost comical (if it weren't tragic) to think policy makers believe that this is all operationally feasible and no big deal. Just negotiate licenses with like a few million rightholders for every possible kind of copyrighted content that users upload, and it'll all be good.

And, btw, be sure not to run afoul of any fair dealing exceptions when you deploy your magical technologies. (We'll leave it up to you to make sure they're magical *enough* to reliably sort infringing from safe content, on the fly, across all the types of content you host.)

Somehow, in all of this ensuring that no unlicensed copyrighted content from your billion users is ever made available, "special focus should also be given to ensuring that...automated blocking of content" is avoided. 🤔

The whole thing remains an utter disaster that is moving forward even as no one is left who really seems to support it. The public doesn't want this shit. The big entertainment companies are now asking for Article 13 to be set aside. The big internet companies have always been against it. And yet it rolls ever forward, with a bunch of clueless, technically illiterate bureaucrats basically saying "well, if we just say big companies should do this without allowing any negative consequences to happen, surely they can figure it out..." and tossing it over the fence.

This is not how sane policy is made. This is how you fuck up the internet.

from the going-for-broke dept

Earlier today, we had a post detailing the completely ridiculous "defense" of Articles 11 and 13 in the EU Copyright Directive that the EU Parliament's JURI Committee released. It was so full of misleading statements, outright lies, and contradictory arguments that it would have been hilarious, if it wasn't trying to justify changing the entire internet for the worse. However, those of us who think that the EU should drop Article 13 (and Article 11) entirely now have a very unlikely ally: the legacy entertainment industries, who were the ones lobbying heavily for Article 13 in the first place.

Really.

As we had noted last month, as the negotiations moved forward on Article 13, the TV, sports and film industries -- calling themselves the "creative sectors" -- have been suddenly freaking out and asking the negotiators to hit the brakes, or at least carve them out of Article 13. They were doing this for all the wrong reasons of course. Specifically, negotiators had begun to consider a very, very limited (and ridiculously weak) safe harbor for internet platforms, that if they followed a few key steps, they'd be able to avoid having massive liability foist upon them if they let any users sneak through an upload of infringing content (they'd still have to pull it down quickly after it was uploaded, but they wouldn't be facing billions in fines).

We understand the eagerness to bring the negotiations to a close within the current mandate. However, rather than rushing the highly controversial Art. 13 and seeking conclusion of this provision, no matter the jeopardy to the European copyright framework and no matter the prejudice and damage to the creative sectors before the end of this legislative period, we urge EU co-legislators to suspend negotiations with respect to this article.

We agree. Negotiators should drop Article 13 entirely (Article 11 as well, but we'll discuss that another time).

This letter is signed by a bunch of legacy copyright interests, with the main one being the MPA (the MPAA's international arm). And their reasoning, as before, is that they actually think that they're going to get a better deal (i.e., no safe harbors for internet services at all) in the EU Courts:

One of the main justifications for Article 13 articulated in the Commission’s original impact assessment back in 2016 was the absence of a CJEU referral that could bring clarity to the question of whether an uploaded content service is responsible for acts of communication to the public and/or can benefit from the hosting provider status under the E-Commerce Directive. Since that assessment the situation has now fundamentally changed. In the meantime, such a referral has been launched by a recent decision of 13 September 2018. The German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) referred a case to the CJEU involving YouTube/Google and certain rightholders, for clarification of this very issue (case C-682/18 Google e.a.).

Basically, Hollywood and its friends pushed for Article 13 when they thought that courts had read the law (correctly) to mean that the safe harbors already existing in the E-Commerce Directive applied to internet platforms hosting user generated uploads of content. However, at least one German court has mucked that up, and that case is being reviewed by the EU Court of Justice... and Hollywood is hoping that the CJEU will just declare that these safe harbors don't apply for platforms hosting content. Basically, Hollywood is going for broke. It truly wants to make the internet change massively, such that there is no more "user generated content" platforms unless those platforms first agree to throw money at Hollywood not to sue them. It's pretty close to an outright extortion scam.

Either way, we're happy that Hollywood has now properly recognized that EU negotiators have no business moving forward with Article 13, and we're happy to agree that it should be dropped.

from the one-piece-of-the-puzzle dept

We've written a few times about a key DMCA case in Texas, involving the ISP Grande Communications and Universal Music Group (and, by proxy, the copyright trolling operation Rightscorp). The case has had a lot of up and downs, with the judge tossing UMG's "vicarious infringement" claims, while letting the "contributory infringement" claims move forward. In October, the court rejected UMG's attempt to bring back the vicarious infringement claims which had already been dismissed, with some fairly harsh words directed at UMG for attempting that.

The latest, as first noted by Torrentfreak, is that the magistrate judge has recommended rejecting Grande's use of the DMCA safe harbor defense. I still have general issues with the idea that the "repeat infringer" part of the DMCA is being accurately described in these cases (specifically: the courts are now applying it to accusations of infringement, rather than actual infringers, which requires a court adjudication). However, the magistrate basically points out that Grande can't make use of the safe harbors because... it had no repeat infringer policy at all. Or, rather, it did, but in 2010 it stopped using it, and then never had a policy through 2016.

So, without a policy, they couldn't have reasonably implemented it... and thus, no safe harbors. Given the facts of the case, that's perhaps not that surprising. The DMCA requires you to have a reasonably implemented policy (Cox lost its similar lawsuit not because it didn't have a policy, but because it didn't follow its own policy).

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that UMG is going to win the case. Not having the safe harbor makes it harder for Grande, but not fatal. UMG will still need to prove contributory infringement, which is going to be fairly difficult to show. Earlier in the case, the court had noted "that this is not yet a well-defined area of law, and that there are good arguments on both sides of this issue." Effectively, UMG will need to show that Grande "induced" infringement by its actions, and Grande will claim it did no such thing. But it can't just use the DMCA safe harbors to get the case dismissed, rather it will need to focus specifically on the question of whether it induced people to infringe.

from the get-your-act-together dept

Last week, we pointed out that while you might hear copyright industry lobbyists and EU regulators repeatedly insisting that all of the concerns being raised about the EU Copyright Directive are being driven by "big tech" lobbying, the actual data shows that over 80% of the lobbying effort has come from legacy copyright industries, pushing really, really hard for a massive expansion in copyright law that will fundamentally change how the internet works (and not in a good way). It's become clear, watching these lobbyists in action, that they will say absolutely anything, no matter how ridiculous, if they think it will lead to getting their beloved Article 13, where the sole purpose is to fundamentally change the internet from a communications medium, in which anyone can share anything they create, to a fully broadcast medium, where everything must first be licensed. Obviously, the legacy copyright companies want this badly, because they're in the business of licensing. And, if everyone suddenly needs to get licenses, suddenly they become relevant again.

But, as we mentioned last week, those same lobbyists are freaking out that EU regulators might possibly add a "safe harbor" to Article 13. Even with a safe harbor, Article 13 is a problem, but without a safe harbor it's a disaster. The "safe harbor" would just mean that if internet companies follow specific steps to rid their platforms of infringing works, then they can't get sued. But the copyright players badly want to be able to sue, because that's how they rid the internet of this amateur competition -- by making it too costly to continue to host.

But in one of the letters sent last week, by the movie and sports industries, they made an odd argument against the safe harbor. Hilariously, they claim that a safe harbor would change copyright law, and the purpose of Article 13 is to codify existing case law. Really:

The initial goal of Article 13 was to codify the existing case-law in a way that
would enable right holders to better control the exploitation of their content vis a vis certain OCSSPs
which currently wrongfully claim they benefit from the liability privilege of Article 14 ECD. Unfortunately,
the Value Gap provision has mutated in such a way that it now creates a new liability privilege for big
platforms and therefore even further strengthens the role of OCSSPs to the direct detriment of
rightholders.

First of all, this is a completely laughable attempt to rewrite history. The E-Commerce Directive's Article 14 contains safe harbors that have always been held to apply to internet service providers. But, still, it's odd to see them claiming that Article 13 isn't supposed to do anything new.

Apparently, however, this new message didn't make it to all the lobbyists working on this thing (either that, or they just don't care one bit if they give conflicting messages, as long as they get what they want). Neil Turkewitz, a former RIAA VP, who was a huge part of the RIAA push to dismantle the internet bit by bit over the past few decades, has written up some crazy rant about Article 13, where he makes exactly the opposite argument that his buddies in the film and TV industries were making. Rather than merely codifying existing law, Turkewitz wants you to know that Article 13 is a wonderful new idea:

Articles 11 and 13 are designed to create markets where none presently exist, or are marred by unfair competition — to breathe life into property interests that are themselves protected under international law.

This is obviously crazy as well and has no basis in reality. There is no "unfair competition." What Neil and his buddies consider "unfair competition" is any competition in which the deck isn't stacked in massive favor for the record labels. Anything that allows an open internet, where there is competition and artists can (*gasp*) go direct to the audiences they want, and explore new business models, is an abomination that must be destroyed. And the best way is to call it "unfair competition."

Still, these two arguments can't go together. Is Article 13 codifying existing law, as the MPA says? Or is it creating new markets where none presently exist, as per the ex(?) RIAA guy?

Once again, these guys are showing why you can't trust a single word that they say. They will say absolutely anything to get their way and fundamentally take away the open internet.

On a separate note, Turkewitz's laughable article gets more laughable the more you read. I particularly enjoy this part:

But regardless on one’s views of existing safe harbors, one thing is clear — Congress and the Administration should refrain from locking in what is essentially the beta version of internet governance — rules adopted at the dawn of the commercial internet.

If you know anything about the past three decades that Turkewitz spent at the RIAA, one of his focuses was doing exactly what he's now complaining should not be done. He was a key player in pushing the worst aspects of copyright law into every international trade agreement, locking in bad ideas such that they couldn't be changed -- in particular the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. For him to now whine about an attempt to use the same mechanisms to include the "protective" elements for user-rights and free speech in the form of the safe harbors of the DMCA is particularly bold. It's amazing anyone takes him seriously.

from the maybe-dump-article-13 dept

Today was the latest set of "Trilogue" negotiations for the EU Copyright Directive, between the EU Council, the EU Commission and the EU Parliament. When the trilogues were first scheduled, this was the final negotiation and the plan was to hammer out a final agreement by today. As we've been reporting lately, however, it still appeared that there was massive disagreement about what should be in Article 13 (in particular). And so, today's meetings ended with no deal in place, and a new trilogue negotiation set for January 14th. As MEP Julia Reda reports, most negotiators are still pushing for mandatory upload filters, so there's still a huge uphill battle ahead -- but the more regulators realize how disastrous such a provision would be for the public, the better.

Also worrisome, Reda notes that after the Parliament rejected Article 13 back in July, MEP Axel Voss agreed to add an exception for small businesses that helped get the proposal approved in September. Yet, in today's negotiations, he agreed to drop that small business exception, meaning that if you run a small platform that accepts user generated content, you might need to cross the EU off your list of markets should Article 13 pass.

One other important thing. Earlier this week, we noted that the TV, film and sports legacy companies were complaining that if Article 13 included a basic safe harbor (i.e., rules that say if you do certain things to remove infringing content, you won't be liable), then they no longer wanted it at all -- or wanted it to just be limited to music content. That suggested there might be some separation between the film/TV/sports industries and the music industries. But, no. Right before the trilogues, the legacy recording industries released a similar letter:

The fundamental elements of a solution to the Value Gap/Transfer of Value remain, as acknowledged by all three institutions in their adopted texts, to clarify that UUC services now defined as Online Content Sharing Service Providers (“OCSSP”) are liable for communication to the public and/or making available to the public when protected works are made available and that they are not eligible for the liability privilege in Article 14 of the E-Commerce Directive as far as copyright is concerned. We continue to believe that only a solution that stays within these principles meaningfully addresses the Value Gap/Transfer of Value. Moreover, licensing needs to be encouraged where the rightsholders are willing to do so but at the same time not be forced upon rightsholders.

Therefore, proposals that deviate from the adopted positions of the three institutions should be dismissed.

Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, the text now put forward by the European Commission would need fundamental changes to achieve the Directive’s aim to correct the Value Gap/ Transfer of Value.

For example, solutions that seek to qualify or mitigate the liability of Online Content Sharing Service Providers should be considered with an abundance of caution to avoid the final proposal leaving rightsholders in a worse position than they are in now. Any “mitigation measures”, should they be offered to OCSSPs, must therefore be clearly formulated and conditional on OCSSPs taking robust action to ensure the unavailability of works or other subject matter on their services.

This is pretty incredible when you get past the diplomatic legalese. These music companies are flat out admitting that the entire goal of this bill is to hit internet companies with crippling liability that makes it literally impossible for them to host any user generated content. This isn't -- as they claim -- about a "value gap" (a made up meaningless term). Rather this is the legacy entertainment industry going all in on an attempt to change the internet from a platform for the public, to a locked up platform for gatekeepers. In short, they want to take the internet and turn it into TV. Europe should not let this happen.

from the don't-wreck-the-net dept

Over the last few weeks, the so-called trilogue negotiations between the EU Council, the EU Commission and the EU Parliament on the EU Copyright Directive have continued, and it appears to have created quite a mess. As you'll recall, because the Council, the Commission, and the Parliament all passed somewhat different versions of the Directive, they now have to go through this process to come up with a version that they all agree on -- and based on some of the proposals and discussions that have come out, it's been a total mess. And specifically on Article 13 -- the provision that will mandate upload filters -- the current situation is an total mess.

Seriously, it's so bad that basically no one wants it any more. And, yes, that includes some of the copyright extremists from the legacy copyright industries. Over the weekend, a group of entertainment organizations -- including the MPAA's international branch, the MPA, the Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA) and the notoriously aggressive copyright litigant, the Premier League, all got together to send a letter complaining about Article 13 and the direction it's gone in. Hilariously, they're not complaining that it's over-aggressive -- rather they're whining that Article 13 might actually have been made fairer as the negotiations have gone on. Specifically, they're upset that there are now safe harbors proposed for platforms to help them avoid liability. These entertainment groups apparently think safe harbors are some sort of damn loophole:

Recall that the initial goal of Article 13 was to codify the existing case-law in a way that would enable right holders to
better control the exploitation of their content vis a vis certain OCSSPs which currently wrongfully claim they benefit from
the liability privilege of Article 14 E-Commerce Directive.

However, unfortunately, the Value Gap provision has mutated in such a way that it now strengthens even further the
role of OCSSPs to the direct detriment of right holders and completely undermines the status quo in terms of the EU
liability regime. Some of the options proposed for discussion at trilogue level indeed wrongfully undermine current law
and weaken right holders’ exclusive rights by, among others: creating a new liability privilege for certain platforms that
have taken specific steps to avoid the availability of infringing copyright content on their services (but have failed to do so
effectively), and conditioning protection of copyright online on right holders bearing the full burden of identifying and
notifying copyright infringing content to platforms. These would constitute gifts to already powerful platforms, and would
de facto constitute the only real change to the current status quo in legal terms, thus improving the position of platforms,
but not of right holders.

Much of this complaint is complete bullshit. Article 13 has never been about "codifying existing case-law." It has always been about upending case law in Europe (and elsewhere) to completely gut intermediary liability protections, end user-generated content platforms, and turn the internet into a TV-like broadcast system, where the legacy company have "control" again (i.e., they get to extract monopoly rents as gatekeepers). The fact that the trilogue negotiations have introduced safe harbors should be seen as a good thing, but obviously not to the signatories of this letter.

Incredibly, the signers of the letter actually ask the negotiators to drop Article 13, or, at the very least limit it to merely applying to musical works. That would still be a problem, but would certainly stop most of the collateral damage that Article 13 would cause in its present state.

Meanwhile, many other companies are recognizing just how damaging Article 13 would be. Reddit has started alerting all of its EU users (and pointing them to our very own DontWreckThe.Net website), pointing out how disastrous the EU Copyright Directive would be for everyone who uses Reddit:

The problem with the Directive lies in Articles 11 (link licensing fees) and 13 (copyright filter requirements), which set sweeping, vague requirements that create enormous liability for platforms like ours. These requirements eliminate the previous safe harbors that allowed us the leeway to give users the benefit of the doubt when they shared content. But under the new Directive, activity that is core to Reddit, like sharing links to news articles, or the use of existing content for creative new purposes (r/photoshopbattles, anyone?) would suddenly become questionable under the law, and it is not clear right now that there are feasible mitigating actions that we could take while preserving core site functionality. Even worse, smaller but similar attempts in various countries in Europe in the past have shown that such efforts have actually harmed publishers and creators...

Accordingly, we hope that today's action will drive the point home that there are grave problems with Articles 11 and 13, and that the current trilogue negotiations will choose to remove both entirely. Barring that, however, we have a number of suggestions for ways to improve both proposals. Engine and the Copia Institute have compiled them here at https://dontwreckthe.net/. We hope you will read them and consider calling your Member of European Parliament (look yours up here). We also hope that EU lawmakers will listen to those who use and understand the internet the most, and reconsider these problematic articles. Protecting rights holders need not come at the cost of silencing European internet users.

Article 13 changes the dynamic of how services like Twitch have to operate, to the detriment of creators.

Because Article 13 makes Twitch liable for any potential copyright infringement activity with uploaded works, Twitch could be forced to impose filters and monitoring measures on all works uploaded by residents of the EU. This means you would need to provide copyright ownership information, clearances, or take other steps to prove that you comply with thorny and complicated copyright laws. Creators would very likely have to contend with the false positives associated with such measures, and it would also limit what content we can make available to viewers in the EU.

Operating under these constraints means that a variety of content would be much more difficult to publish, including commentary, criticism, fan works, and parodies. Communities and viewers everywhere would also suffer, with fewer viewer options for entertainment, critique, and more.

So, at this point, we have the internet platforms calling out how the Copyright Directive will harm all sorts of creators by making the platforms they use impossible. We have the film and sports industries complaining that there might actually be some safe harbors included in Article 13, which would apparently ruin the whole point for them (!?!?!?!?!?). The only one who still thinks Article 13 is a good thing apparently is the legacy recording industry who has been fairly open in that the entire point of Article 13 is to force YouTube to pay them more (even though it wouldn't actually do that).

So, hey, maybe it's time to scrap Articles 11 and 13 and not try to rush through copyright proposals that will have a massive impact on how the internet works, done by bureaucrats who clearly don't understand the impacts of what they're proposing, while in backroom negotiations?

from the how-much-longer-can-it-last? dept

Many stories on Techdirt seem to grind on forever, with new twists and turns constantly appearing, including unexpected developments -- or small, incremental changes. The transatlantic data transfer saga has seen a bit of both. Back in 2015, the EU's top court ruled that the existing legal framework for moving data across the Atlantic, Safe Harbor, was "invalid". That sounds mild, but it isn't. Safe Harbor was necessary in order for data transfers across the Atlantic to comply with EU data protection laws. A declaration that it was "invalid" meant that it could no longer be used to provide legal cover for huge numbers of commercial data flows that keep the Internet and e-commerce ticking over. The solution was to come up with a replacement, Privacy Shield, that supposedly addressed the shortcomings cited by the EU court.

The problem is that a growing number of influential voices don't believe that Privacy Shield does, in fact, solve the problems of the Safe Harbor deal. For example, in March last year, two leading civil liberties groups -- the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch -- sent a joint letter to the EU's Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, and other leading members of the European Commission and Parliament, urging the EU to re-examine the Privacy Shield agreement. In December, an obscure but influential advisory group of EU data protection officials asked the US to fix problems of Privacy Shield or expect the EU's top court to be asked to rule on its validity. In April of this year, the Irish High Court made just such a referral as a result of a complaint by the Austrian privacy expert Max Schrems. Since he was instrumental in getting Safe Harbor struck down, that's not something to be taken lightly.

Lastly, one of the European Parliament's powerful committees, which helps determine policy related to civil liberties, added its voice to the discussion. It called on the European Commission to suspend the Privacy Shield agreement unless the US fixed the problems that the committee discerned in its current implementation. At that point, it was just a committee making the call. However, in a recent plenary session, the European Parliament itself voted to back the idea, and by a healthy margin:

MEPs call on the EU Commission to suspend the EU-US Privacy Shield as it fails to provide enough data protection for EU citizens.

The data exchange deal should be suspended unless the US complies with EU data protection rules by 1 September 2018, say MEPs in a resolution passed on Thursday by 303 votes to 223, with 29 abstentions. MEPs add that the deal should remain suspended until the US authorities comply with its terms in full.

It's important to note that this vote is largely symbolic: if the US refuses to improve the data protection of EU citizens, there's nothing to force the European Commission to comply with the demand of the European Parliament. That said, the call by arguably the most democratic part of the EU -- MEPs are directly elected by European citizens -- piles more pressure on the European Commission, which is appointed by EU governments, not elected. If nothing else, this latest move adds to the general impression that Privacy Shield is not likely to survive in its present form much longer.

from the a-little-history-lesson dept

Last week we announced our new site EveryoneCreates.org, featuring stories from many different creators of music, books, movies and more about how important the internet and fair use have been to their creations. As we noted, the reason for the site is that the legacy copyright gatekeepers at the MPAA and the RIAA have been using the Trump-requested NAFTA renegotiations to try to undermine both fair use and internet safe harbors by positing a totally false narrative that the internet has somehow "harmed" content creators.

Yet, as we know, and as the stories from various artists show, nothing is further from the truth. For most artists and content creators, the internet has been a huge boon. It has helped them create new art, share it and distribute it to other people, build a fan base and connect with them, and make money selling either their work or related products and services. As we've discussed before, in the past, for most artists, if you did not find a giant gatekeeper to take you on, you were completely out of the market. There was very little "long tail" to be found in most creative industries, because you either were "chosen" by a gatekeeper or you went home and did something else. But the internet has changed that. It has allowed people to go directly to their audiences, or to partner with platforms that help anyone create, distribute, promote and monetize. Indeed, the internet has undoubtedly helped everyone reading this to create art -- whether for profit or just for fun. And if that's the case with you, please share your story.

But it is worth taking a step back and asking an even larger question: how the hell did we get here? How did we get to the point that the MPAA and the RIAA are using NAFTA negotiations to try to undermine the internet. Rest assured: there's a long, long history at play here, and it's important to learn about it. The idea that you can or should regulate the internet or intellectual property in trade agreements should seem strange to most people -- especially as most trade agreements these days are about increasing free trade by removing barriers to trade, and copyright by its very nature is mercantile-style trade protectionism that places artificial limits and costs on trade that might otherwise be cheaper.

An excellent history on this topic comes from the aptly named 2002 book Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy by Peter Drahos and John Braithweaite. It tells the story of how a concerted effort by legacy copyright maximalist organizations laid the groundwork for making sure that copyrights and patents were always included in trade agreements, by getting them in as a key part of the World Trade Organization and by the creation of TRIPS -- Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. The book details how the legacy industries turned "intellectual property" from a question of benefiting the public to a solely commercial arena of corporate ownership and trade.

Once that was in place, these same industries wasted little time in exploiting the reframing of issues around copyright and patents. Famously, the DMCA itself was created in this manner. The record labels and movie studios had a friend in the Clinton White House in Bruce Lehman, who wrote a white paper in 1995 requesting draconian changes to copyright law targeting the internet. However, he found little support for it in Congress. Five years ago, Lehman himself admitted that when Congress refused to act he did "an end-run around Congress" by going to Geneva and pushing for a trade agreement via the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which required DMCA-like copyright rules.

With that treaty in hand, Lehman and his Hollywood friends came back to Congress, insisting that our "international obligations" now required Congress to create and pass the DMCA, or we'd suddenly face all sorts of trade and diplomatic problems for failing to live up to those "international obligations" that they themselves had put into the trade agreement. Indeed, ever since then, nearly every international trade agreement has included some crazy provisions related to copyright and patents and other IP rights -- all designed to effectively launder these laws through the highly opaque international trade negotiation process, and then insist that legislatures in various countries simply must ratchet up their laws to meet those obligations.

Given all that, there's at least some irony in the fact that these same groups that forced the DMCA on Congress through an international trade agreement back in the mid-1990s are now trying to use a different trade agreement 20 years later to force changes to that very same law (and others). Once again, the process is opaque. And once again, the industry is well connected and represented on a variety of the "Industry Trade Advisory Committees" (ITACs), giving them much greater access to the details of the negotiations while the public is kept in the dark.

But the history here is clear. Moving copyright into trade agreements was a purposeful move, pushed for by legacy industries so they could promote their favored protectionist laws around the globe, in part by moving them away from being designed for the public's benefit and towards a world in which information and knowledge was considered to be privatized, owned, and locked up by default. It ignored the fact that, often, the public can benefit the most when information is open and widely shared. And, decades later, we're still dealing with the fallout from these bad decisions.

And that's why it's so important for policy makers to understand that it's complete hogwash to argue that the RIAA and MPAA are "representing artists" in trying to undermine the internet this way. Most artists recognize that the internet and various platforms are a key part of their ability to create, distribute, share, and support their artwork these days -- and they are not being represented at the NAFTA negotiating table.